Thursday, November 20, 2008

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I decided to give it a shot again this year, thinking I could rip something out in 30 days, giving myself a month off from The Rider. I decided to not stray too far, attempting to adapt a story about a guy who gets seduced by the devil, based from Meatloaf's Bat out of Hell album trilogy (an idea I've mulled about for a long time).

10,000 words and two weeks later I found myself thinking again and sitting in front of my laptop working on the rider. Edmund will not leave me alone.

I went to Chicago last weekend to see my old roommate graduate, and also to have a whirlwind trip through the town that I hated at first, but now miss so much. I saw a few, but not all of the friends that I wanted to. I ate at a few, but not all of the restaurants I wanted to. But nonetheless it was much needed and a very cathartic send off to the end of my first Semester at SI.

On my last day there I got a call from my writing buddy, Lane. He's now down at SIU doing his masters in creative writing, and teaching an undergrad course in the English Department. We've been unable to get back together on the couple of trips I made south, and spent a long time catching up on writing and what we're doing. He mentioned the rider alot, using his actual name, Edmund, which was very endearing, and I ended up walking away from the conversation charged up to start writing again.

So here I am, almost through November, failing again at NaNoWriMo, and not really caring because I am further into the rider than I've ever been.

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I tried something new, realizing I had a large number of unwritten or unfinished short stories. I took wall tack and 3x5 cards and on each card wrote a one sentence synopsis of the short story idea, and a hook if I could come up with one. Next I stuck the note cards on the wall in no particular order.

My plan is, starting in December, to take one card off the wall on the 1st, and by the end of the month have a first draft of a short story finished. Do this for each month, if only as an exercise to keep my skills sharpened while working on the rider's story.